Hazards of Time Travel

Well, this is weird! As a huge JCO fan, one of the things that I love about her is that she's *not* simply re-writing the same book over and over - the variety in her output is hugely impressive. This one, though, is a bit of a puzzle...

It starts as a homage to 1984 with a kind of 'Sovietisation' of the US: acronyms of bureaucratic bodies abound, people can be 'disappeared' and free thought is severely circumscribed. Adriane, our 17 year old narrator, upsets the regime by openly (and naively?) questioning their authority and is punished by being whisked back to university in 1959 Wisconsin...

Cue some 'is that how people lived' scenes (typewriters! hair curlers!) and some interesting wandering down theories of selfhood. JCO seems to be taking a swipe at the plethora of YA dystopias where a young woman falls in insta- love and leads a rebellion: in this book, that 'love' is subjected to a subtle interrogation and the rebellion segues into student politics of the 1960s: anti-nuclear weapons, civil rights.

But then, things take a surprising turn and the ending reminds us that one of the qualities we love about JCO is her boldness.

This is an allusive novel: 1984, Stalinism, the Divergent trilogy, The Matrix, Trump's America and the nostalgia for the 1950s when, allegedly, pesky women/non-whites/communists/Jews etc. etc. were kept in their place (even as, ironically, western society was agitating for more inclusive, socially-just ways of being).

There are places where this feels like it's lost its way; and then, bam, JCO hits us with a revelation that both amuses and also changes everything. I disagree with the early reviews I've seen which peg this as a YA novel: it may have a YA narrator and gesture towards some of the tropes of that genre, but it deconstructs as much as it re-uses and makes productive capital from the interactions.

This is not JCO at her best and may not be the best place to start if you haven't read her before - but by the end, I was entertained and stimulated by her witty and rather wicked take on contemporary literary trends and modern US politics.

Does a society where outspoken dissenters are vaporised or exiled seem so far-fetched in today’s USA? Adriane is a young woman with a mind of her own who finds herself exiled in the 1950s and a world where women knew their place. Will she find her kindred spirit and fight, or give in to mediocrity? I very much enjoyed this disturbing novel that seems not a million miles away!

The amazingly prolific Joyce Carol Oates has written her novel in response to President Trump. All totalitarian regimes are the same, and The Hazards of Time Travel is reminiscent of Orwell's 1984.
It is the future, and North America has become rigidly authoritarian and has a form of apartheid. Adriane is caught thinking for herself, and is exiled to another time.
Despite her punishment, Adriane is unable to be other than who she is. After a hideous depiction of her imprisonment and sentencing, Adriane is marooned in 1959. She discovers she is not the only person exiled there.
Oates, through the story, is telling us what the world could easily become if right wing populism continues its' march through the West.